I homeschool my children, who are 7 and 8, and lately we've been studying the Elizabethan period in history. Accordingly, we're taking a couple of weeks to spend some time with Shakespeare, and today, I read the kids Edith Nesbit's retelling of Romeo and Juliet.
When I got to the end - lots of dead people in a tomb - I closed the book and looked up to find my poor son absolutely slack-jawed with horror. "Are they going to come back to life?" he asked.
"Well, um...no, honey. They died."
"How could you read us that?" he demanded. "You never read us stories like that!"
I tried to explain that that was what made it a tragedy, and that not every story has a happy ending just like not everything in life has a happy ending.
"Well, you should warn us next time," he said, betrayal shining in his eyes.
And he's right - I should. And I will. From now on, WHAM warnings are the order of the day around here.
Caroline, who probably wasn't going to win Mother of the Year anyway...
